Raptr Q & A 2014

E3 2014

Other

Twitch Livestream Sept 29 2014

Mike Laidlaw and Cameron Lee held a live stream on Twitch on September 29, 2014, showing off some more combat, a new area in the Deep Roads, and the character creator. They also answered questions from fans.

I took a few notes between trying to take screen shots, so here's the gist of most of what they answered. I may have missed a few things.

There is feature parity between the Xbox and PC versions, but of course the UI is different between the two

You can respec mid-game

There are no face replication codes (a la Mass Effect) but they know it's a popular feature and are looking into it

There are no full-body tattoos, just facial

No beauty marks

The Qunari's horns & hair are chosen together, ie they are linked

They can have asymmetrical horns or no horns at all - they can also be broken

In regards to their tattoos, they are not in the character creator. Theirs are called "vitaar" and is a material applied like war paint that is toxic to other races. It's equipped like a helmet rather than chosen in the cc.

Body types: all races are different (size/height etc) but there are no sliders

You can give your Inquisitor a double chin if you want to make him or her look a little 'thicker'

There is custom stage lighting in the character creator that is the same used for cinematics, so characters should look the same or very similar in both

The Inquisitor's in-game portrait is their glowy hand, the character creator does not affect it at all. It turns red if the Inquisitor is in trouble to make it easier to notice

The new area we saw in the stream was in the Deep Roads

We can fall off ledges and such. The Inquisitor (and presumably the companions you have with you) will respawn back where they were, but enemies will die, and their loot and XP will go over the edge with them

When we craft, we will use patterns. So if we find something we really like the look of, we can keep that same look and just keep upgrading it with better materials

There are only 8 health potions as a maximum number we can carry

Friendly fire is a separate setting from difficulty

Combat abilities and spells can be cast outside of combat

Mages and archers have evade and escape abilities (and other things like sleeping dust such as shown at E3), no melee attacks

Enemies will repopulate, the game tracks the world and enemies and animals will come back over time (I'm assuming that is unless you completely de-populate an areas, as they've already said you can do so and then it will no longer repopulate)

High dragons do not repopulate, and neither do story-driven enemies

You can recover more health out of combat while on Easy difficulty, but it will not come back completely

There is no approval "bar" - you will see if a companion slightly or greatly approves of something but there is no bar and no + or - approval. You will be able to tell overall how they approve of you/your actions if the way they greet you changes, if your interactions change, or if more content opens up for that character.

The character creator is very in-depth and has options for everything from beards to scars and tattoos to makeup for both genders. The tattoos are different based on what race you've chosen. You can see more detail in the screen shots below.

You can watch the Twitch stream here or on YouTube: part 1 and part 2. There is also a mini-cc demo here. Enjoy!

Apologies for the low-res screen shots - I don't have the bandwidth for HD. The first one is one officially released by Bioware. Then Ryan Treadwell tweeted the female and male tarot cards shown in the character creator. There's also some shots of the load screens and crafting. Also see Twitch Livestream Combat Screen Shots.